Regeneration policies are not delivering the expectedresults. British towns and cities in receipt of substantial urban policy funding designed to bring them up to the economic standard are declining. This calls into question the 30bn pounds spent in the last decade on a plethora of urban regeneration schemes delivered by a myriad of different agencies. Policy Exchange, an independent think tank, has looked abroad to find alternatives that could work better. A new report: ‘Success and the city – Learning from international urban policies’ charts a way forward.

Public services have not been making the transition to provide more innovative and effective outcomes quickly enough. There are examples of innovative thinking, but it’s really only scraping the surface of what could be achieved. This is the view of Tom Watson, Minister for Transformational Government, and over the next few months he plans to help with accelerating the pace of change.

The annual pay reward survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development includes responses from the private, public and voluntary sectors covering 2 million employees.

The survey found that one third of respondents have a reward strategy and a further one quarter plan to create one in 2008. Last year 40 per cent of respondents intended to bring in a reward strategy; most have not succeeded so far, indicating that implementing a reward strategy is far from easy.